The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [156]
"Yes," Beldrune told him simply. "What's the good of being human, elsewise?"
Caladaster stared at him, mouth hanging open, for what seemed like a very long time. Then the old wizard swallowed deliberately, shook his head, and chuckled feebly. "I never saw things that way before," he said, almost admiringly. "Do you laugh at gods often?"
"One or twice a tenday," Beldrune said solemnly. "Thrice on high holy days, if someone reminds us when they are."
"Stand back, holy mocker," Tabarast said suddenly, waving at him. Beldrune raised his eyebrows in a silent question, but his old friend just waved a shooing hand at him and strode forward, adding, "Move those great booted hooves of yours, I said!"
"All right," Beldrune said easily, doing so, "so long as you tell me why."
Tabarast knelt in the rubble and tugged at something, a corner of bright cloth amid the stones. "Gems and scarlet fineweave?" he asked Faerun at large. "What have we here?"
His wrinkled old hands were already plucking stones aside and uncovering cloth with dexterous speed, as Beldrune went to one knee with a grunt and joined him at the task. Caladaster stood over them anxiously, afraid that, somehow, a ghostly sorceress would rise from these rags to menace them anew.
Beldrune grunted in appreciation as the red gown, with gem-adorned dragons crawling over both hips, was laid out in full…but he promptly plucked it up and handed it to Caladaster, growling as he waved at more cloth, beneath, "There's more!"
The daring black gown was greeted with an even louder grunt, but when the blue ruffles came into view and Tabarast stirred around in the stones beneath enough to be sure that these three garments were all they were likely to find, Beldrune's grunts turned into low whispers of curiosity. "Being as Azuth wasn't wearing them, that I saw, these must have come from her" he said.
Tabarast and Caladaster exchanged glances. "Being older and wiser than you," his old friend told him kindly, "we'd figured out that much already."
Beldrune stuck out his tongue in response to that and held up the blue gown for closer scrutiny.
"Do these hold power, do you think?" Tabarast asked, the black gown dangling from his fingers as Caladaster suppressed a smirk.
"Hmmph. Power or not, I'm not wearing this backless number," Beldrune replied, turning the blue ruffles around again to face him. "It goes down far enough to give the cool drafts more'n a bit of help, if you know what I mean…"
Twenty: Never Have So Many Owed So
Much
Never before in the history of this fair realm have so many owed so much to the coffers of the king. Never fear but that he'll come collecting in short order…and his price shall be the lives of his debtors, in some foreign war or other. He'll call it a Crusade or something equally grand… but those who die in Cormyr's colors will be just as dead as if he'd called it a Raid To Pillage, or a Head Collecting Patrol. It is the way of kings to collect in blood. Only archmages can seize such payments more swiftly and recklessly.
Albaertin of Marsember
from A Small But Treasonous Chapbook
published in The Year of the Serpent
"Doomtime," that deep voice boomed in Elminster's head. "Mind you make the right choices." Somehow, the Athalantan knew that Azuth was gone, and he was alone in the flood of blue sparks…the flood that he'd thought was Azuth…whirling him over and over and down… to a place of darkness, with a cold stone floor under his bare knees. He was naked, his gown and dagger and countless small items of magery gone somewhere in the whirling.
"Robbed by a god," he murmured and chuckled. His mirth left no echo behind, but what happened to it as it died away left him thinking he was somewhere underground… somewhere not all that large. His good feeling died soon after his chuckle, Elminster's innards felt…ravaged.
It was damp, and a chill was beginning to creep through him, but El did not rise from his knees. He felt weak and sick, and…when he tried to seek out magic or call up his spells…all of